Tag Archives: allegory
A Valentine for Angela (for Angela Davis, George Jackson and The Black Panther Party)
When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine
Tell her
No code of morals
Or pastoral sermons of redemption
in bastions of struggle
nor private language
Or puritanical divinity
from the tyrannical gatekeepers
of black consciousness
in Baptist Churches
Where the house of God
like the people are falling
and bibles are missing
countenances are broken
and carriages are bent
on Grandfathers
huddled like old horses
in Chapel basements
can keep her locks from draping
my thrilled skin
I felt the linguistics of freedom
without right-wing caveats
and the sophistical footnotes
of kept intellectuals
when Black Power waxed
the center of my tower
and the bottom of your well
farther than this cell
and closer than holding you
in my arms now
I found the status quo
on endless streets with names
and no names
we neglect or accommodate
In a sound dream
on spots
we smother
or straddle
we are a sexual coterie
I wanted to indict you for voluntary servitude
buying part and parcel of our own existence
like exploitation bought and exploitation sold
back to the exploitable…
With a shameless display
of unnecessary needs and haughty miens
napping, unconscious, and folded
Like Black parents
who cannot recognize their children
Hiding inside androgynous clothing
Reciting the lines of criminal poets
perverting language that appeals to them
Black Panthers in proletariat-drag
When Heidegger said
The dreadful has already happened!
Tell her…
Huey
is an effete dilettante
living life inside a penthouse
longing to be outside in the cracker box
raping after he was free
Down with the masses!
Up with the bourgeoisie!
Eldridge
came to the Party shouting
“I am a rapist!”
“I [am] a patriarch!”
Power was not concept
abstract or privilege for Eldridge
His last contribution
will be the design
of cock pants
And Bobby
is a politician
with idealistic intentions
running for the Mayor of Oakland
loyal to the Patriarchs
that bound and gagged him
in the courtroom
Elaine Brown
confused pussy with power
will deny
Huey beat her down
and ran her out of town
in her red Mercedes Benz…
Hide your guns from Jonathan
My brother is poised for Fatalism
Suicidal ideations are necessary considerations
when voluntary death is a blow against
excessive regulations
The gun…
is justification
for the enigma
of an absurd existence
when God is dead
like Nietzsche and Sartre said…
and heaven is empty
When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine
Your status in the ballroom
on that intellectual runway
does not resemble
the place we found
Bring me back from Limbo…
Your breath is shallow
Your pulse is faint
The ring is dark
The tower is steep
The well is deep…
Are you coming too?
I am waiting
in this din
pacing the floor in my 9 x 4
in absolute solitude
wanting
you, you, you,
again…
Copyright 2004, 2015, 2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
[Reserved][Reserved] — An Invitation to Dine
Dear Poet, [Yes, you!]
I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved] with dope poesy and select a date for submission. However, if we receive one hundred thousand and one couplings, we’d read them… but frankly, why not do, all of the above.
The empty brackets function like missing endings now — lacking only your bylines, pseudonyms, and ghosts — in translatable bars that work in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).
Poets make this space immersive. Explode – The Writer’s Environment is an interactive environment — and this is the first foray for interactivity in this community — that links back to you!
Starting August 15, 2017 — let’s finish this poem with the best bars — curated for Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) here… Bon appétit.
Cordially,
The Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan
PS: No Spam — Balls in the air! An experience for us and them.
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller
Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s Parallel Discussions
Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s
Parallel Discussions (In Medias Res) Overtaken by Events
Behind Pushkin’s Coffeehouse, Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso sat on the remnants of a barge, trading barbs in Ibiza… swinging high top leather sock hip hop sneakers, and creeper boots in blue green virtual water, with Rick Owens’ reflection in the pool, burning fat ones – away from the beautiful ones — in a Period Piece. The Darlings of today’s literati — visionaries during the Harlem Renaissance, play themselves in a satirical throwback in VR.
Louis Picasso: “In RL, it’s 6 P.M. You just got home from work or you work from home in your virtual office. You decide to spend the evening in space! You scan Balmain for your Avatar – dope fashion — with as much audacity as Hype Williams’ black lacquered Keisha in Belly — wearing Versace!
You decide to download your brand new Porsche designed by Porsche and Atari for Microsoft, on the Pacific Coast Highway — Malibu on the left, Pepperdine University on the right, you’re on your way to virtual LA in the fast lane — your thighs are burning. Other avatars and their cars share the PCH too — driving Vipers, Corvettes, the white BMW X6 and you are speeding at 100 MIPS, streaming Coltrane.
Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “Then you decide to go to BET’s virtual Nuyorican Café in Gotham City for the Open Mike – Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore are featured (as themselves) tonight. You hand the keys to the valet — pay at the door with your password, sit front row center no matter what time you arrive, sign up to read your poem — because you can start over from the beginning or resume. Gender! Lame. Race is unimaginative in Space. Ethnicity is a brand — at best. The Open Mike is over at 10 P.M. but there is still time to go to Bar Pitti. You walk in and Claude McKay is at the bar in a heated debate with Ralph Ellison about literary ownership — by Netflix.
McKay shouts and then nearly whispers to Ellison, ‘It takes more than creative androgyny to “embody” the opposite sex. The storytelling responsibility of all writers, whether female or male is to fill the void. When a woman creates a man, she must imagine the sensation of “owning” a penis. When a man creates a woman, he must imagine the sensation of “owning” a vagina. It is a void, not a vacuum. A vacuum would imply the all-consuming black hole — the feminization of sex. It is not trained comprehension or chromosomes — it takes pure imagination to get the story straight…’
Louis Picasso: “Then, at Midnight, you blow kisses and wuggles to your friends, and log off. You stand and stretch your back, and your bladder is bursting because you forgot about your biological realities. The television is off; it has been off for weeks. Why watch television when you can be your own audience? Randall Walser said it best, “The filmmaker says, ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ The space maker says, ‘Here, I’ll help you discover.’ We will be our own creators functioning like actors in high culture — tools of the taste public! We will create our own universes — our own planets. We can superimpose our images circa 6 BC – AD 30, and follow Jesus to the Promised Land, witness the crucifixion – and how we feel and what we think is utterly private and without commercials! Because, global messages with common appeal will forever change with today’s technology, the challenge is to make communication visual, images symbolic, and still sell product… I want to propose arcane ideas…”
Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “I want to develop, manage, and direct vision. My goal is to be where imagination and business are indistinguishable, because imagination without business, and business without imagination is as incongruous as capitalism without consumers… I found a dope quote dog!”
“When, she was still in her teens, well before she met Caesar, Cleopatra already had slept with Antony… though Caesar was fifty-three and she but twenty-three or so she proved ready enough to bed her third Roman. It is said that Cleopatra was a woman of lively turn and enticing talents. She also had a keen sense of the political. That this Roman [Caesar] conqueror had the power to secure the Egyptian throne for her must have added to the attraction she felt for him…Caesar established her in a sumptuous villa across the Tiber, from which she held court, while political leaders, financiers, and men of letters, including the renowned Cicero, danced in attendance.” Michael Parenti
Louis Picasso: I’m reading the same book, and I have a better one!
“In a prologue to Caesar and Cleopatra [George Bernard Shaw] that is almost never performed, the god Ra tells the audience how Rome discovered that ‘the road to riches and greatness is through robbery of the poor and slaughter of the weak.’ In conformity with that dictum, the Romans ‘robbed their own poor until they became great masters of that art, and knew by what laws it could be made to appear seemly and honest.’ And after squeezing their own people dry, they stripped the poor throughout the many other lands they conquered.” Michael Parenti
Aristotle Michelangelo: Shrugged his shoulders unconsciously, “Chez Bricktop in Paris?”
Louis Picasso: Not now. I am having a violent reaction to prescription drugs! My body is like, ‘Don’t put that shit down here again!’ They gave me all this medication for Acute Caesarion whatever — and I took it! Of course, you don’t exhaust the shit. You’re not an idiot. But, what the fuck? Where the weed at?”
Aristotle Michelangelo: I think it would be dope to channel Kerouac’s apology for automatic writing.
“He likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow, and unrestrained association, to reveal the unconscious… because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose!” Dystopia, Explode 2015 2.0
So, here goes… They called her Marnie — behind her back. I was torn. I played with variations of Marnie. Black Marnie. Brown Marnie, Tortilla Marnie. It’s the language of found art. Bansky, Kehinde, Jazz, Hip Hop… They teased each other. Hitchcock’s Margaret, Mary, Marnie, teases Mark, so she could get the combination, to his company safe, and steal the money. She was a Kleptomaniac, a compulsive thief. A killer. She disappears. On the run! He tracks her like an animal, and finds her at a Lodge, riding her horse to the stables. He orders her off the horse, tells her she’ll walk — he’ll ride. He interrogates her. She tells him a bullshit story she can’t keep straight. He calls it, manure! Tells her to start over from the beginning, and this time — tell the truth. Back at the Lodge – he tells her to freshen up, change her clothes so he might take her to the police – she thinks. She does not know… It’s Tippi Hedren in RL! The white woman of a black man’s dreams – when he dreams about white women. Blonde, pearly white teeth and skin — Barbie! Beckie! He tells her, they will return to ‘the house’ and announce they are engaged, would to be married within the week and then cruise around the world. Of course, she thinks he’s “Out of his mind!” He told her, it was either marriage or the police, old girl. Black Marnie. Who would play her?
They get married. Eventually he takes her virginity. She tries to commit suicide. I don’t think I want to go there… Suicide. Who should play Mark? [#nomoreslavestories.] Does he catch her?
Louis Picasso: I remember that story. He said, I caught a real animal this time. I had to train her… to trust me.*
Aristotle Michelangelo: Pussy Riot danced in the cathedral — goes to jail, and the artist nailed his scrotum to the Red Square. She’s a prisoner of love. That kind of love makes me uncomfortable, racked, and anguished like a pet must be around possessive people. The energy is ignitable like the choice between blowing up and letting go. I don’t want to belong to anyone. But, what do I know about love?
Louis Picasso: Black people don’t like black people. That’s why we’re in this — hole… barrel, bucket, duck it, fuck it… We know it’s true. Listen to the tonal center of this beat!
Aristotle Michelangelo: In sixty revolutions a minute, if it’s not organic, I can’t get with it. Hate is not organic. Hate is a social construct. I want to live the life I swam to the egg for… A social construct is like zoon pushed to the egg, by stronger swimmers behind it. It’s still goal niggaz. I want an organic experience on this gridiron. A certain freedom, mere man can’t give, conceive or contrive. I want freedom Divine. You want to be free — you have to fuggin’ work for it. Zufi?
Aristotle Michelangelo: You need money, software and rigs in the virtual world. Bombs are obsolete. Race and gender is a pastiche — game challenges for points.
Louis Picasso: Beauty and power is iconography and homely stamps are hiccups – and brick and mortar is a path to experience the destruction of daredevils and matadors — in coliseums of pestilence and poverty – empirically.
Aristotle Michelangelo: Why go there? When, life is a perfect dream in a virtual world.
Louis Picasso: IJS. Get on board with — evolution. Evolution is not physical space. It’s the diamond life in our heads on a loop. Its VR not the moon…
Aristotle Michelangelo: I love wearing the mask! You can’t see my countenance — in La La Land, my eyes may smile. My lip may curl up or down… I’m an introvert; an INTJ — is that Caprino?
Louis Picasso: Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, it will be impossible to ignore slavery in America… Why are some Black Americans worrying about slavery in America being taught in schools? The horse is out of the barn! Instead of embracing Juneteenth and all that it implies… Black Americans are WHINING and using the language of slaves, “they won’t, let us, allow us, give us and get…” Instead black Americans are still looking the other way when a black man drags a black woman by her hair [DC], and black people are murdered by black people in Chicago – for giggles. June 19, 2021 marks the day, that Black America must acknowledge that ‘we’ are no longer slaves and assume responsibility — that’s what freedom is.
Copyright 2016, 2018, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast rewritten or redistributed without permission.
*Alfred Hitchcock, Marnie
Lust for TIDAL — The Sweet Sixteen
Someone has to go with Ego
To the story about the story inside the poem
On ground eroding under sweet feet
Where dreams so real are accessible
and parodies will do
Epic stories tied to epic tracks
One point perspectives
and narcissistic points of view
Aural stories linked to sublime beats:
The gift between Agamemnon and Achilles
The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
between Socrates and Kant
An opus for Free Angela and all Political Prisoners
Her quiet laughter at the end
Why should Kim go alone to France?
Fie for Shame! Blood hath been shed…*
Make room for Superego!
Believing the fiction they think
They know
It’s true
Someone has to go with Id
Those streaming millennial Randites!
kissing clicks on tours
happy blowing up Karaoke machines again
Dénouement: This whimsical WIP is for the sixteen owners of Tidal High Fidelity Music Streaming! Turn it up!
Copyright 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*The Tragedy of Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Queen!
Flagrancy
Draped over flesh folding,
Overlapping, lapping, titties like water
Coursing over plantations
landing on designer gods
She’s the Queen of make believe
dross, lace, and fancies
the strumpet of style and envy
supply and demand
framing references
of fragmentation and icons
the whore of big business
luxury and privilege
Capital Supreme
She gives it to you every time
the same kiss same trade
whispering buy me
while you sit splayed still
eating her conditions
wanting more between
feasts
An electric whore transfixed on fiction
screaming paeans of promises
in fleeting imagery faster than you can think
Candle eyes revealing
nothing and something equally
commercial bitch
coca cola coochie
The queen of white hot dreams and fantasies
Dreaming the business of culture
for recycled cyclical people
in suspended disbelief
Chronos’ eating children again
consuming – regurgitating
the piss Ellison smelled in the hallway
the blood he saw at the top of the stairs
of the worn unfresh and rotted
postmodern prostitute
circumscribing your will to dream
someone you
White voodoo yahoo
looping tricks for
fifteen pimps
Coliseum dreamers
in concert muffle
the scream
Hegemony is a bore!
Capitalism is a whore!
Patriarchy is a sham!
Subjugation is complete!
You can’t dream for me…
Children of the light!
dreaming in strophe
what she dreams
what she thinks
what she wants you to need
what she wants you to buy
when to laugh
cry
what to eat and how often
who to love
hate
how to suffer
on her terms
Dreamers of the light!
dancing for the gods
in collective nothingness
tweaked to think vapid
celebrated center-folds
of flagrancy at your expense
dare to dream
alone in dark energy
Turn off the lights
of the Queen of white hot fantasies
in unsuspended disbelief
Let’s make believe!
The Sirens’ in the room
and you applaud
on your knees
Give props to the Queen
of postmodern dreams
of white white-white hot trips
on Lilly fields designed
for you to dance
for the gods
pimping their dreams of her… and them
on wide screen… for you
~dance
Kill your TV!
Copyright 2004, 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Godforsaken
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
they knew who first
judged what out of dreams
came truly real*
and he was fastened to a rock
and they knew who
stirreth up the people and dippeth his hand**
in the dish with Judas
and he was nailed to a cross
And they read books within books
about wise and foolish virgins
and signs of the end
and love and judgment
and they heard God talk
through the mouths of men
who talked about him
his son and the holy ghost
When spectators provided the notion of reality
Christ and Prometheus
were objectified and subjectified allegory
spheres of hope and rebellion
courage and prudence
temperance and justice
and how they chose to read it
in the time before terror
depended on what level
they chose to see it
Pity
incredible people and prophets
who function as vehicle
for literal, moral,
and anagogical levels of meaning
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
they reused and refashioned the heads
of emperors in their own image
because they could
they reinforced power and authority
with legitimate political imagery
like the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses
and General Holofernes
They respected the classical past
in fertile crescents of greed
and they rejected classical design
in the center of ruins
They housed the rock in the dome
on which Muhammad ascended to heaven
and hung the Virgin Mary’s blue robe
in Chartres Cathedral
and it didn’t burn
and they appropriated columns
and Corinthian capitals
and called it the holy triumph
of Islam
When denizens of form said
Nothing is new…
The godforsaken asked,
Since when?
since the Lion Gate
since the Great Sphinx of Gizeh
since Doric and Ionic orders
since the Palette of King Narmer
since the Parthenon
since Stonehenge
Since when?
They stood in the light of starry nights
in the drum, coffers, and concrete cylinders
of uninterrupted space in the Pantheon
and made no apologies for ripping off
master tracks from the past
and heard the hip hop train
sampling every post-hit
with unripe music and blood
and mounted the heads of gods
on the manifest
like the catalog of procreation
in Genesis
They heard his Mother
three blocks away
on parallel streets
screaming redundantly
You won’t take my child!
You won’t take my child!
at the vigil where transvestites
whispered about how many times
her child was stabbed in the neck…
Lord have mercy!
Who are these motherfuckers?
on the bottom rung of the Ladder of Descent
trying to climb up
on the backs of allegories
floating in fleeting and airy hope
part of the story
part of the sin
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
He knew
that love ends
as it begins again
on rocks and crosses
in books and dreams
and politics and imagery
under domes and temples
in music and song
and blood and death
in stories and sin
and in the hands
of God
~ the Swallows are building.
Copyright 2004, 2013 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
** Matthew 26: V21,V22,V23,V25